Greenland: EU States Hold Emergency Meeting over Trump’s 10% Tariff Threat

*Mull counter-measures, describe US’ plan as blackmail 

*May revive €93 billion tariff move against America 

*Keep Macron’s ‘bazooka’ strategy in view, prioritise negotiation

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

European Union (EU) leaders scrambled into crisis talks yesterday after the U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would slap a 10 per cent tariff on imports from several EU countries, including Denmark, France and Germany, unless they agree to Washington’s push to buy Greenland.
Also, major EU states Sunday decried Trump’s tariff threats against European allies over Greenland as blackmail, as France proposed responding with a range of previously untested economic countermeasures.
Trump vowed on Saturday to implement a wave of increasing tariffs on EU members Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, along with Britain and Norway, until the U.S. is allowed to buy Greenland.
Cyprus, holder of the rotating six-month EU presidency, summoned ambassadors to an emergency meeting in Brussels, which started at 5 p.m. (1600 GMT) yesterday, as EU leaders stepped up contacts.
In the same vein, a source close to French President Emmanuel Macron said he was pushing for activation of the “Anti-Coercion Instrument”, known as the ‘bazooka’ which could limit access to public tenders, investments or banking activity or restrict trade in services, in which the U.S. has a surplus with the bloc, including digital services.
Although an update on the outcome of the meeting is expected later today, it was learnt that EU countries will not yet deploy the anti-coercion instrument in response to Trump’s Greenland tariff threats. The EU will prioritise a ‘diplomatic solution’, sources said.
The EU members were said to have backed off from triggering the trade ‘bazooka’ in retaliation for US President Donald Trump’s tariff threats over Greenland during the urgent meeting in Brussels.
EU member states wanted to first prioritise dialogue and diplomacy with the US, and will in the meantime hold off from triggering any retaliatory measures, the sources said.
However, they could revive a €93 billion retaliation package targeting US products if Trump follows through on his threat to slap an additional 10 per cent tariff on eight European countries  on February 1.
A decision on whether to reinstate the tariffs, suspended last year, will be taken after that deadline. The €93 billion package was prepared amid uncertainty last year over whether Trump would agree to a EU-US trade deal, and foresees retaliatory EU tariffs of up to 30 per cent on a range of US products from cars to poultry.
All eight countries, already subject to U.S. tariffs of 10 per cent and 15 per cent, have sent small numbers of military personnel to Greenland, as a row with the United States over the future of Denmark’s vast Arctic island escalates, Reuters reported.
“Tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral,” the eight-nations said in a joint statement published on Sunday.
They said the Danish exercise was designed to strengthen Arctic security and posed no threat to anyone. They said they were ready to engage in dialogue, based on principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a written statement that she was pleased with the consistent messages from the rest of the continent, adding: “Europe will not be blackmailed”, a view echoed by Germany’s finance minister and Sweden’s prime minister.
“It’s blackmail what he’s doing,” Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said on Dutch television of Trump’s threat.
Meanwhile, European Council President António Costa has convened an extraordinary summit of EU leaders in the “coming days.” A source familiar with the matter suggested the summit will take place on Thursday, January 22.
Bernd Lange, the German Social Democrat who chairs the European Parliament’s trade committee, and Valerie Hayer, head of the centrist Renew Europe group, echoed Macron’s call, as did Germany’s engineering association.
Meanwhile, Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said that while there should be no doubt that the EU would retaliate, it was “a bit premature” to activate the anti-coercion instrument.
And Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is closer to the U.S. President than some other EU leaders, described the tariff threat on Sunday as “a mistake”, adding she had spoken to Trump a few hours earlier and told him what she thought.
“He seemed interested in listening,” she told a briefing with reporters during a trip to Korea, adding she planned to call other European leaders later on Sunday. Italy has not sent troops to Greenland.
Asked how Britain would respond to new tariffs, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said allies needed to work with the United States to resolve the dispute.
“Our position on Greenland is non-negotiable … It is in our collective interest to work together and not to start a war of words,” she told Sky News on Sunday.
The tariff threats call into question trade deals the U.S. struck with Britain in May and the EU in July. The limited agreements have already faced criticism about their lopsided nature, with the U.S. maintaining broad tariffs, while their partners are required to remove import duties.
The European Parliament looks likely now to suspend its work on the EU-U.S. trade deal. It had been due to vote on removing many EU import duties on January 26-27, but Manfred Weber, head of the European People’s Party, the largest group in parliament, said late on Saturday that approval was not possible for now.
German Christian Democrat lawmaker Juergen Hardt also mooted what he told Bild newspaper could be a last resort “to bring President Trump to his senses on the Greenland issue”, a boycott of the soc